News Posts

In 1867, two years before this Museum was founded, eight-year-old wildlife enthusiast Theodore Roosevelt Jr. created his own Roosevelt Natural History Museum in his family’s New York City home. The collection included the skull of a seal, birds’ nests, insects, and mouse skeletons. He collected and mounted this Snowy Owl near Oyster Bay, Long Island, in 1876.

Kick off the new season of SciCafe, the Museum's popular first-Wednesdays series featuring science, cocktails, and conversation, on October 3 with paleontologist Michael J. Novacek.

Dr. Novacek, who is also the Museum's Provost of Science, will discuss why and how we should create a comprehensive inventory of species, understand the evolutionary relationships of the major branches of life, and probe the connections between the genome and the more external traits of organisms that their genomes influence.

Contradictory explanations for the evolution of nectar-drinking in a diverse group of bats have long puzzled scientists, but new research led by the American Museum of Natural History and Stony Brook University provides a clear answer.

The conflicting explanations come from two different types of data. Genetic data suggest that nectar feeding evolved twice in New World leaf-nosed bats whereas earlier analyses of the bats’ anatomy point to a single origin of nectar feeding. These bats are found in Central and South America and, uniquely among bats, eat nectar, fruit, frogs, lizards, and blood.